Fatma Sinem Eryilmaz, researcher at the Department of Modern and Contemporary History, in collaboration with Alexander Fidora, ICREA researcher at the Department of Ancient and Medieval Studies, has secured funds to study Occult Sciences in the Islamicate Cultures in one of the three Synergy Grant projects awarded by the ERC this year.
The UAB team will work as a research partner with researchers from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), the University of Bologna (Italy), the University of South Carolina (United States) and the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (Germany) in the project MOSAIC (Mapping Occult Sciences Across Islamicate Cultures).
During the next six years, a team of around 35 senior and junior researchers, and PhD students will study documents, objects, and images produced in a wide range of linguistic and cultural traditions, including Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Greek, and Assyrian, that were used between Late Antiquity and the nineteenth century in an extensive geographical area, stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to India.
The UAB team will work on the intellectual and social networks that flourished in Anatolia and the Mediterranean, the relationship between epistemology and political history, and its reflections in literature and art.
The ERC Synergy Grant aims to support outstanding projects that can only be mastered by pooling various perspectives, skills, and resources. Among the 548 proposals in this year's call, 57 projects received the grant across Europe and beyond. The budget for MOSAIC amounts to €9 million, €655,000 of which will be dedicated to the part to be carried out by UAB researchers.
